My Tribute to a Life-Changing Mentor - Teaching Innovation and the Unifying Path to a Better World

By Scott Dalgleish

My mentor, Dr. Marvin Bartel, passed away last week and I want honor the wonderful impact he has on my life, my family, and many others. I also hope to spread his wisdom and his approach to life.

I met Marvin during the early days of our basement start-up business, Dragonfly Innovation. Our goal was to create and sell fun art kits that taught kids (and parents) creative thinking skills. Marvin is an expert on this topic and I found him through his excellent website, BartelArt.com (take a look). Our conversation lasted many years, but the conversation started with my question, ‘Is there proof that you can teach kids creativity skills so that they are much more innovative in their adult life?’

Marvin replied that it would be impossible to correlate early childhood “creativity lessons” to behaviors decades later. But, he went on to explain, ‘I am a ceramic professor and I use my ceramics classes to teach as much about innovation as working with clay. I built a ceramics studio at my house and I raised my kids with my methods to practice and experiment in my studio.’ He made a compelling case that each of his kids turned-out to be uniquely innovative as adults. I clearly remember thinking, ‘Yea… that’s the kind of parent I want to be.’

Prior to signing-up Marvin as a consultant for our new company, I visited him in Goshen, Indiana. I went to his house – that he designed. As you entered the house, the floor was tile he had made. It had a fireplace hanging from the ceiling that he designed. The foyer also had many of his creative ceramic works of art. (See the photo of Marvin and me). In the bathrooms, the counters and sinks were his ceramic works of art. In his backyard was a unique kiln that he built and patented. In front of his house was a tall ceramic mailbox that he created using a technique he invented to support unusually tall clay structures in burlap bags hung from the kiln roof. The burlap would last long enough to support the limp clay sculpture until the clay hardened with the heat before the burlap burned-away. Marvin had figured out how to make clay sculptures taller than anyone thought possible.

Marvin was a true independent thinker and independent learner. He looked at all sorts of problems with a new perspective and an open mind to new solutions. He loved to experiment with new ideas. He was comfortable going against conventional wisdom and taught that to others. He embraced efforts that had disappointing results as a learning journey. He developed and verbalized methods and techniques to foster new ideas and solutions.

His students loved him. He explained to me, ‘I spend the first few weeks of ceramics class teaching the students the different skills to work clay. I demonstrate the techniques and the students duplicate what I’m doing to learn the skills. But, at the end of these skills classes, I require that they destroy what they made. I don’t want them to be copiers. After they have the skills down, I encourage them to combine the techniques in new ways to make totally original creations. We spend the rest of the semester experimenting and innovating with clay. It is thrilling for everyone to see all the original results.’

My time working with Marvin only lasted about a year but I think about him every day – 15 years later. I still use the coffee mug he made. When people ask me about my coffee mug work of art, I use that as an invitation share what Marvin taught me.

Susan, my wife, and I did our best to spread Marvin’s wisdom about creative thinking and innovating. With Marvin’s help, we consolidated much of his philosophy and methods into “Guidance for Grownups” flyers that we included with the art kits.

The Dragonfly Innovation art kit business unfortunately didn’t take flight. We couldn’t make it a commercial success in the toy market. But, the lessons and methods are alive and well in the way we raised our family and in my career. At work, I applied these methods with my co-workers to develop patented products that were successful because of the innovative features.

At home, Susan and I applied Marvin’s teachings informally every day in family life, and formally in our 10 years of coaching Destination Imagination, Inc. teams. For a decade, we applied Marvin’s methods with the kids in our Destination Imagination teams as they struggled, then succeeded with one wonderful creation after another. One parent of a Destination Imagination team member recently told me this experience was life-changing for their child.

When I learned of Marvin’s passing, I thought about my first question to him - and his answer about his kids growing up in the ceramic studio he built in his house. I’m proud of all of my kids’ accomplishments – but the same week that Marvin passed away, my daughter, an employee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC got to display her art there in the employee gallery. The piece she created is a combination of her passion for story-telling audio with two of her photographs. She used the darkroom skills that I taught her to create the two photographs in the darkroom that I built in our house.

To make the world a better place, we need creative problem solving… and more creative problem-solving teaching. Is there a more unifying concept than that? Creative problem solving can unquestionably be taught and fostered. Marvin left us doing way more than his share of teaching us that there are many possible win-win solutions to troubling problems. I am thankful that I am one of Marvin’s many friends and student-teachers.